30/10/07

VisualDMX Installed in Knokke's Club Zuri

Knokke-Heist is considered to be the most exclusive beach resort in Belgium; it certainly does well in attracting the Belgium jet-set. Positioned right at the North Sea beach, the casino - one of Knokke's hot-spots itself - features the recently refurbished Zuri club. Zuri is a lounge bar with a breathtaking appearance. Interior designer Gerd Couckhuyt created a new dimension inside the venue. Completely coloured in white, the interior makes you imagine being aboard a futuristic space craft. As the sun sets, sliding doors and the wall behind the bar will open up allowing the evening to flow into the larger venue of Zuri; effectively transforming from a lounge bar into a trendy nightclub. The features that Couckhuyt has put into his design are striking, with highly polished attention to detail for the entire space; interior and exterior. Ranging from the outdoor furniture to the DJ booth and from the shapes of the LED fixtures to the lavatories, you'll find the Zuri design in each and every one of them. Architectural and entertainment lighting specialist Lux Lumen was commissioned to supply the lighting fixtures and control; the equipment was installed by Verscheure Domotica. They fitted the club with custom designed LED fixtures that now characterize the Zuri dance floor. Alongside additional LED units, they also installed a large number of the Modular halogen fixtures that produce a warm contrast to the trendy LEDs. Visual Productions' VisualDMX was selected for the club's lighting control. The control software is installed with two USB connected DMX Outputs to reach the required channel count for the 270 LED pixels plus various dimmer racks. Key to this VisualDMX set-up is the touch screen computer running the VisualTouch software. VisualTouch offers click-and-go touch screen control of all programmed cues within VisualDMX. This allows even non-technical staff members to operate the lighting. Rudi Antonissen from Lux Lumen reflects on their choice for VisualDMX: "We have looked for the best possible lighting controller that would still be affordable. VisualDMX' inbuilt matrix controller was also an important criteria for this project; it allows us to map all LED fixtures into a matrix and then run 2-dimensional effects on them. It would have been an endless task to manually program each pixel one by one." Couckhuyt goes on to explain more about the thoughts behind the lighting equipment: "Our objective for the club's effect lighting was to come up with a fixture that by itself was already appealing to look at during the day. Then to have a control system that from the evenings on adds effects and dynamics to the fixtures. Furthermore, the control has to be intuitive; although we always have a dedicated lighting operator, this will be creative person rather than technician." After spending quite some time with the VisualDMX system himself during the Zuri's busy maiden summer season, Couckhuyt notes that: "We gave Lux Lumen carte blanche regarding their choice for a control system; we trust them to be up to date with the control technologies available in the market today. When the installation of the fixtures and system was just finished and we saw the result for the first time, we were taken aback by its effect. The system has many more possibilities then we originally expected."